Why Real Estate Crowdfunding Is An Attractive Investment

Real estate crowdfunding has emerged as one of the hottest investment sectors since the JOBS Act of 2012 was passed where individual investors could begin to partake in larger investments traditionally reserved for wealthier investors.

The whole idea of investing in real estate crowdfunding is to take advantage of faster growing markets with higher cap rates (net rental yields), while NOT having to fly around the country and come up with massive amount of capital. After selling my SF rental house in 2017 for 30X annual gross rent, I proceeded to reinvest $500,000 of my proceeds in properties around the Midwest trading at 10X annual gross rent with 8% – 12% net rental yields.

Here are some reasons why real estate crowdfunding may be an attractive investment for you.

Why Real Estate Crowdfunding Is An Attractive Investment

1) REITs Are Too Diverse

When you invest in a REIT, you get everything they invest in. You can’t pick and choose. There are dozens of properties in a REIT, many of which are not in areas you care to invest in.

Meanwhile, a REIT fund invests in other REITs, which makes your real estate investment exposure even more diverse. Diversity is fine, but if you are specifically investing in real estate, you want to invest in the highest growth markets with the most upside potential.

With crowdfunding real estate sites, you have options. You can invest in individual properties or you can pick very tightly focused eREITs with a firm like Fundrise. The publicly traded REITs are massive and have huge geographic footprints, so you can’t find inefficiencies and take advantage of them.

2) Much Smaller Capital Outlay

To buy a single family home, you need to come up with a 20% downpayment. That’s $300,000+ if you want to buy a median home in San Francisco or NYC. If you want to buy a multi-unit rental property, you have to come up with a 25% – 30% downpayment. Such larger properties cost even more.

Crowdfunded real estate will let you invest as little as $5,000 – $10,000 dollars in a variety of projects. You can diversify your risk across borrower, asset types, geographic location, and project type. Whether you want an NNN (triple net) retail lease or a single family investment, you’ll find it on a crowdfunded real estate platforms.

3) More Selection For Non-Accredited Investors

If you are an accredited investor, you have a net worth excluding your primary residence of at least $1 million, or you earn at least $200,000. Many private investments are only for accredited investors.

However, if you are not an accredited investor, you can still invest in real estate crowdfunding through eREITs, invented by Fundrise. Fundrise is one of the leaders is the non-accredited real estate investing space and for $1,000 you can invest in their eREITs. They have five eREITs focused on regions, income, and grown.

They also have “ePlans” with $500 minimums. You pick whether you want income or appreciation, your level of risk, and they put you in a fund that finds properties that meet your needs. These are typically residential properties and a mixture of debt and equity deals.

One of the main reasons why I sold my San Francisco rental house in 2017 is because I didn’t want to fix the leaks, fix the pipes, and deal with painful tenants who didn’t pay their rent on time. With a new baby, time was too precious for me to deal with all this hassle.

When you invest in crowdfunding real estate, you do no work after the investment closes. You still have all the up front work of analyzing the investment and seeing whether it’s a good fir for your overall plan. After the funds are transferred, it’s managed just like a REIT.

Only 5% of the deals Fundrise sees on their platform make it onto their platform for investors to potentially invest in. This careful curation of the best deals helps save you a lot of leg work in researching the market, the sponsor, and the economics. The incentives are aligned because if they start putting bad deals on their platform, investors will run away.

Less than 5% of the real estate deals shown gets through the Fundrise funnel

6) Geographic Arbitrage Is Your Friend

With crowdfunding real estate platforms, you can invest anywhere. With coastal city real estate trading at all-time highs, I find it much more prudent to invest in the heartland of America. No longer do you need to pay $4,000+ a month for a two bedroom apartment on the coasts when technology allows you to live everywhere!

Surgically investing in lower cost, higher returning parts of the country is a much smarter move.

Here are some of the reasons why you should invest in non-coastal city real estate:

A Republican president will give back to the people who got him there through the theme, “Hire American, Buy American.”

There will be a net migration out of Blue states into Red states as more people realize it’s a great deal living in Texas if you can get 3X as much for 1/3rd the price.

As our country gets older, more retirees will move out of Blue states to stretch their retirement dollar.

The remote work trend will continue due to technology and a tight labor market.

Sanctuary cities are at risk of seeing their federal funding pulled and reallocated to Red cities.

Income growth should be higher in Red states due to demographic shifts.

Trump’s tax plan calls for an elimination of State and property tax deductions, hitting California, New York and New Jersey the hardest, while benefitting cheaper states with no state income taxes to deduct e.g. Texas.

Now that investing in real estate is more efficient, Red State 10%+ cap rates compared to <4% cap rates in Blue cities are too hard to ignore. The spread should narrow.

A potential expansion of who can invest in real estate crowdsourcing will lead to an increase in demand and prices.

The rise of real estate crowdsourcing platforms increases the supply of capital, thereby increasing the demand and prices of previously hard to tap investments.

7) Shorter Duration Investing Periods

The best duration to hold real estate is forever. However, if you have liquidity needs or want to diversify your liquidity needs, real estate crowdfunding will allow you to invest in projects with typically 1 – 5 year time horizons.

If you look on various crowdfunding platforms they’ve got equity deals with 7 years, 5 years and 5 years time frames. The maturity on the debt deals are 24-months, 12-months, and 12-months.

If you go with a company that offers eREITs, your holding period can be as short as you want because you can sell whenever you want. . There are sometimes rules about redeeming / cashing out shares because real estate is meant for a longer hold period. For example, Fundrise allows you to redeem shares but makes you wait for 60-days.

Real Estate Crowdfunding Is Here To Stay

Real estate is currently my favorite investment class to build wealth. It is amazing to be able to live in a world-class city like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, or San Francisco while also investing in cities around the country that have potentially higher returns. You no longer have to live in Des Moines, Iowa in order to invest in Des Moines, Iowa!

If you can invest in a proven asset class over the long term without having to deal with all the hassles of owning property, that’s a big win in my book.

If you are a non-accredited investor, take a look at Fundrise. They were founded in 2012 and are the pioneer in eREITs. It is my favorite real estate crowdfunding platform today.

About the Author: Sam began investing his own money ever since he opened an online brokerage account in 1995. Sam loved investing so much that he decided to make a career out of investing by spending the next 13 years after college working at two of the leading financial service firms in the world. During this time, Sam received his MBA from UC Berkeley with a focus on finance and real estate. He also became Series 7 and Series 63 registered. In 2012, Sam was able to retire at the age of 34 largely due to his investments that now generate roughly $200,000 a year in passive income. He spends time playing tennis, hanging out with family, consulting for leading fintech companies and writing online to help others achieve financial freedom.

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